Friday, October 06, 2006

quote of the day / zitat des tages

Comment by Betamax2006-10-05 16:50:49right…no national bubble, just a nation of individual bubbles that are all correcting around the same time. What a coincidence.

Meanwhile, we can all look forward to our wages doubling or tripling to catch up with house prices so we can have the soft landing that the Dick in charge of Freddie envisions for us all.

“it won’t be soft at every airport” - translation: the runway lights are out on a pitchblack night, the landing gear won’t drop, a perfect storm is brewing, and the plane is headed into a mountain. Carry on. als antwort auf diese zitate vom freddie mac ceohttp://www.freddiemac.com/speeches/syron/ds120605.htmlMy own view is that we do not have a national house price bubble today. We will see a significant slowdown in housing, but this slowdown is from record levels. Housing starts and home sales will stay strong. Prices will likely rise at rates more in line with long term historical averages, not at the double-digit rates we've seen recently. And a nationwide decline in housing prices remains highly unlikely, based on history and the underlying fundamentals. It has become clear, however, that there has been a fair amount of froth in certain marketsAt this point in the cycle, a "soft landing" that allows incomes to catch up with house prices would be healthy. A crash landing provoked by bad policy decisions and spiking interest rates would not. I believe a soft landing is achievable – but it won't be soft at every airport. bravo betamax!jan-martin